UK IT for teams everywhere.
Smart Start IT looks after the tech, security and Microsoft 365 for UK businesses with people in Bristol, London, Manchester, Madrid or Bali. One team. Real engineers on the phone. Predictable monthly cost.
Critical response, average. Not a target — the actual number.
Monthly, ex VAT. No hourly billing. No surprise invoices.
UK-based engineers. You know the names of every person on your account.
Lock-in contracts. Monthly rolling. You stay because we're good.
Vendors we work with
How we're set up
The partnerships behind every account.
Microsoft Partner
Microsoft 365 environments, Entra ID, Defender — set up, managed, and tuned for how founders actually work.
Pax8 Strategic
Direct vendor pricing pipeline. You get the rates and we pass on the savings — no margin baked into licences.
Cyber Essentials ready
We get clients certified in 2-4 weeks. NCSC-aligned controls baked into every environment we run.
UK GDPR · ICO registered
Data handled in the UK, by UK engineers. ICO-registered. No offshore handoffs in the support chain.
What we do
One team. Every layer of your IT.
Support, security, strategy, scale — designed to work together, not as five disconnected vendors.
What we help with
The tech problems most businesses run into. Sorted.
Slow tickets, no answers.
“We raised a ticket on Tuesday — no follow-up.” The MSP “escalates” and disappears. Three days later you fix it yourself.
We answer the phone. Critical issues get an engineer in under 15 minutes. You see ticket status any time. Same engineers, same tickets, every week.
A patchy Microsoft 365.
Half the team on personal Gmail. Files in three Dropbox accounts. Logins everyone shares. New starters take a week to onboard.
Microsoft 365 set up the way Microsoft intends. Files in one place, accounts properly secured, MFA on every login, devices joined to Entra ID. Starters productive by 10am day one.
Cyber insurance or Cyber Essentials looming.
A customer, insurer or tender asked for Cyber Essentials by month-end. You don't know where to start. The IT team isn't sure either.
Two- to four-week certification sprint. We do the scoping, fix the gaps, complete the questionnaire with you. Most clients certify on the first submission. Renewal stays on our calendar.
Moving office, merging, or scaling fast.
New office wiring. A merger that joins two Microsoft 365 tenants. Ten starters in a month. The day job stops because the project doesn't.
Project-managed properly. Fixed quote, written plan, weekly status. We do the devices, networks, licences, handovers. You keep running the business.
Why founders pick us
IT support, the way you'd run it if you had the time.
We've been you
Bristol-run, founder-led. We know what it feels like to have IT as one more thing on the list. We sort it so you don't have to think about it.
Plain English, always
We will never make you feel daft for asking. You get to stop pretending to understand acronyms and get back to the work that pays.
One price, no surprises
£35 a user a month, ex VAT. Add the security stack if you need it. That's the whole price list. No hourly billing.
Same humans, every time
You will know the names of the people on your account. Email Declan if something is off — he runs the company.
How it works
From first hello to running smoothly.
Four steps. No drama. You see exactly what you are getting at every stage.
01
First chat
30 minutes on Zoom. Where you are, where you want to be, where IT is getting in the way.
02
The honest read
Written report in 2 working days. What is working, what is risky, what to fix first. Yours to keep.
03
Real numbers
One monthly price, full scope, no asterisks. You see exactly what is in before you sign anything.
04
Day one
Smooth handover from your current provider. Day one feels quieter, not louder.
From the founder
Most MSPs are reactive. We're not most MSPs.
The MSP industry has a default mode. Wait for tickets. Fix them. Bill the hours. It works for the MSP. It does not work for the founder paying the invoice.
I started Smart Start IT because I kept meeting brilliant people running brilliant businesses — coaches, consultants, agency owners, bootstrapped founders — who were being treated like ticket numbers by IT companies that did not return their calls.
You do not need an enterprise IT department. You need the foundations done properly, one number to call, and someone who picks up. That is it. I run the company. I take the audit calls. If you book one, you are talking to me — not a salesperson.
— Declan Smith
Founder, Smart Start IT
Who we work with
The kinds of businesses we look after.
Real scenarios, anonymised. Yours might look like one of these — or nothing like them. Either way, the work tends to rhyme.
35 staff, two offices, tax-season-sensitive.
We manage their Microsoft 365, secured the tax-season environment, and got them Cyber Essentials before their professional indemnity insurer asked for it. Helpdesk covers both offices and the partners' home setups.
Detailed case study coming soon.
20 staff, fully remote, UK plus Europe.
Distributed team across the UK, Spain, Portugal. We sorted starter onboarding (laptop arrives configured, working by 10am day one), locked down sensitive learner data via conditional access, gave them one bill for licences.
Detailed case study coming soon.
12 staff, public-sector tender with a 3-week deadline.
They needed Cyber Essentials certified in three weeks to bid on a council framework. We ran the certification sprint, fixed gaps, completed the IASME questionnaire with them, and got the badge in 16 days. They won the bid.
Detailed case study coming soon.
28 staff, AI-curious, client-confidentiality-strict.
They wanted to roll out Microsoft Copilot to the senior team without leaking client briefs into a public AI model. We tightened SharePoint permissions, added sensitivity labels, wrote their AI use policy, and ran a 45-minute training. Three months in, the team uses it every day.
Detailed case study coming soon.
Predictable pricing
One number, multiplied by your headcount. Ex VAT. Add the security stack on top. No hourly billing, no surprise invoices.
Worked example: a 25-person business on the base plan plus security stack pays around £1,075/month + VAT. Microsoft licences passed through at Pax8 rates, no markup.
Common questions
The questions we hear most.
What size businesses do you work with?
From solo founders to teams of around 100. Sweet spot is 5 to 50 staff. If you are bigger we will tell you honestly whether we are a sensible fit.
How long does onboarding take?
Usually 2 to 4 weeks from first call to fully running. We handle the handover from your current provider — including the awkward conversations.
What does it actually cost?
£35 per user per month, ex VAT, for the base plan. Security stack quoted separately. No hourly billing. The pricing page has worked examples.
Do you handle Cyber Essentials?
Yes. Most clients certify in 2 to 4 weeks. We have a fast-track service if you have got a customer or insurer deadline coming up.
What is included in the base plan?
Microsoft 365 management, support, monitoring, patching, onboarding new starters, offboarding leavers, quarterly reviews. The full bit you would want from "the IT person", without hiring one.
What if we already have someone doing IT?
Common. We work alongside in-house IT, or we take over fully. The free audit will tell you which makes sense for where you are.
Get back to running the business.
One 30-minute chat. Honest answers about where you are, what's working, what to fix. Written report in your inbox 2 working days later. No sales script.